Outsourcing data center may be the greenest path - By Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Dec 21 2009)

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   If businesses can manage to get through the hurdles of outsourcing data center operations to co-location, hosted and/or cloud-based services, the results are likely to be more "green" than trying to build new data centers from scratch – a temptation that many companies are facing as they look at a run on capacity in the next few years.

   About half the companies running data centers between 5,000 and 50,000 square feet – in the "Mid-sized" range – expect that they're going to run out of power in 18 months, says Ted Ritter, a senior research analyst at Nemertes Research.  Ironically, companies running small and very large data centers seem to be just right when it comes to power consumption, according to the data Nemertes has collected on sustainable data center operations.

   Problems break down into two issues.   First, there just might not be enough raw power provisioned for the data center.  Even if there is enough power, there's also the issue of being able to provide enough power per rack when moving into the world of virtualization.   A typical rack of servers draws about 4 kilowatts, but consolidation into multiple virtualized servers on blades may result in a rack of blade servers requiring 12 to 16 kilowatts – not exactly what might have been planned on day one when they were putting in the raised floor.

   A typical co-location facility can provide anywhere from 8 to 16 kilowatts per rack and also typically has more and higher-speed bandwidth to support its operations, so a company might get some bonus performance by outsourcing servers to a third-party.

   Almost a quarter of businesses surveyed by Nemertes said they were going to build a new data center – a very expensive proposition that runs around $2,000 per square foot of construction.  Others were looking at overhauling their HVAC plant for savings.  Since HVAC consumes about 45 percent of the total power in the data center, efficiencies in cooling can pay off in freeing up enough power for more server capacity.

   However, outsourcing doesn't come without challenges.  The biggest one companies face is the level of security and continuity risk for moving operations outside of the corporation and to a third-party.  Operations with compliance requirements, such as financial and health care, will have much more stringent regulations and procedures to follow. 

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